Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Teachers Forum What sort of musical ear would you need?

I'd love to be a teacher and my musical ear is probably a little over average but I don't feel it's good enough. My teacher is incredible, he plays pieces like the minute waltz by ear without ever having read the sheets and he has perfect pitch. I have a little perfect pitch around 6/12 and good relative 12/12 but I still struggle to tell which key something has modulated to though this could be as a result of no practice in this area.

What does everyone else think? How important is it and do you think my skills are enough or should I try my best to improve? I fear that I may reach a natural bottleneck and not be able to be any better than I already am.

Thanks in advance.

If you mean pitch and interval recognition, I think that's important, but not 'make or break' if you can teach or not, because I assume you will be using music. As a teacher you will need to be able to recognize if the student is playing a 6th or a 4th for example.

If you mean sitting down to play something you have just heard "by ear", I don't think that matters unless that's what they want you to help them learn. I can't play anything "by ear".

I can definitely tell the difference between a 4th and a 6th so that makes me feel a lot happier about it all. I was worried that I would be expected to be able to play Chopin 4th Ballade without ever having seen the sheets!

I f that were the case there wouldn't be any piano teachers around!

I was exaggerating slightly but I think I'd compare myself too much to my current teacher. I would struggle to learn a Chopin Waltz by ear, for example. I could perhaps get the chords correct with a few hours but the notes would probably not be 100% and I feel I should probably be able to do this before being a teacher. I still have a long way to go as far as sightreading and technique but my life goal would be to be a teacher and ear training can only do so much.

Are you saying that you think you should be able to play the notes %100 correctly from playing by ear before you think you can teach?'

Or are you talking about sight reading them?

Talking about playing by ear. What sort of thing do you think you could learn by ear E&I because from what I've readof your posts you seem like a very successful teacher.

I'm having some trouble following this discussion because I don't think I understand what you mean by "playing by ear". Are you talking about teaching classical repertoire without any sheet music? Somehow training students to listen to pieces and then trying to re-create them note-for-note for themselves without printed music?

When you say that your teacher plays the Minute Waltz by
ear, do you mean he doesn't read music and you're
being taught in a purely by ear method? That's very
rare, and moreover you say you're working on sight-reading,
so I assume your teacher reads music and you're
being taught more or less conventionally. If your
teacher reads music, then he is not playing the Minute
Waltz by ear. He's playing it from memory, which
is in a sense "playing by ear", but that's very
different from a person who doesn't read music
figuring out how to play the Minute Waltz note
perfect just by sound.

I'm assuming then that when you say "by ear" you
mean "from memory." If you actually mean by ear, then
playing the Minute Waltz or the 4th Ballade note perfect
purely by ear, never looking at the score, would
be very rare. This would probably be possible,
because jazz players do this with music where there's
no score, but since classical music is all published,
there would be no real need to do this.

For what it's worth, I've never met anyone who can play a piece such as the Chopin 4th Ballade without ever having looked at the score.

Of course, "playing by ear" is a useful skill, and should be developed to a degree, but it's not the most important skill in piano, and most piano teachers probably aren't all that great at it (especially in classical music, where ear training of all sorts is severely undervalued).

I mean playing by ear as in never seen the music.

My teacher has never seen the music and/or learnt it yet he can play it by ear. He DOES teach me conventionally and we rarely talk about playing by ear but I wrote a piece of music that was 5 pages long and he played it perfectly note for note which is just incredible in my eyes.

Gyro that was basically what I was asking. How rare is it to be able to do this? He probably couldn't do the 4th ballade like this but the fact he can do simpler pieces is mind boggling. I do feel a little happier knowing that playing by ear is not as important as I thought.

I'm very good at playing from memory by the way, I know they're two different things.

That is sight-reading. maybe that's why I'm having a hard time understanding what you're asking.

Sight reading is playing music with the score in front of you, but never have seen it or played it before (like what your teacher did with what you wrote).

Playing by ear is sitting down and playing a piece with no music at all in front of you.
and you have never seen the music for that piece before.

Playing from memory is playing a piece that you originally learned from sheet music, but can now play without the music.

In this case I'm going to answer you assuming that you mean sight reading, and tell you that isn't rare at all. I would say most teachers can do it.

NO NO NO. I gave him a recording, I never wrote it down. Sorry I should have made that clear.

This would be a very nice skill to have, especially
if you're a jazz/popular player. You could then listen
to anything on the radio and reproduce it on the
piano. Apparently anyone can do this with much
practice. For example, if you reach the point
where you can read a score and hear it in your
head, then the reverse--hearing something and
then knowing how to play the notes on the
piano--would probably be within your grasp.
Studio musicians have this sort of ability
developed to a high level. A classical teacher
wouldn't need this though, since repertoire is learned from
published scores and then played from memory.

Thank you for the definitions, Ebony and Ivory.

People I have talked to have suggested that Playing by Ear is a completely different skill than sight reading and playing by memory. Perhaps the skills even come from a different part of the brain.

For many non-classical styles learning a tune by ear is the norm. Good players in these, often, "folk" (in the broad sense) styles do not play with music in front of them.

What Gyro said. Yeah.

If you're playing pop music, folk, blues, the more simple stuff, it's pretty easy to learn to play songs you hear on the radio, ie the chords and melody, maybe the solos. Trained jazz musicians can usually pick out a lot of stuff by ear, if you go to Scott Raney's Jazz web site, you'll find lots of note by note jazz solos that have been transcribed by the musicians.

On the other hand, I saw a TV show with an autistic savant who could hear a classical piece on piano and reproduce it instantly.

I don't think it's realistic to expect yourself to learn to play things like Chopin Ballade by ear. It's hard to describe how ear works for most jazz musicians... Ｉ’ve transcribed big band charts, film scores, solo jazz piano performance of Keith Jarret, Bill Evans ..etc I can transcribe almost anything, but I am far from being able to play chopin Ballade by ear. I can find my way through Chopin Nocture op9#2 by ear.. I can get the chord's and stuff, but my voicings won't be 100% accurate.

For jazz musicians, a lot of 'playing by ear' happens not just from your ears but from your familiarity and muscle memory. I can learn a new tune very fast, because you've heard those chord changes before.. and you can learn some slows very quickly because you hear cliches that is common t jazz. So a lot of what they do by ear is combination of ear, theory knowledge and muscle memory.

I am guessing that's how my teachers learned too.. they showed me a lot of stuff, like how Bill Evan's played "some other time" or other standards.. Some of them even committed an entire album worth of solos to memory, but it took them months, if not years to do that. They did learn them by ear, but I am sure they had to practice a lot and work it out in order to play them, I doubt they could just hear it once and play it.

So I don't think most us can . "listen to anything on the radio and reproduce it on the piano" instantly and accurately. You can get the 'general idea' fairly quickly, but if you want to get it right, it will take some time to work through them, esp if the music is hard.

I think if I had to, I could come up with Twinkle or Happy Birthday lol. Seriously, I am not good at it. I can sight read well, but the ear thing just doesn't work for me. Although, I can tell when a student hits wrong notes if I'm looking away. So maybe if I gave it some effort, just maybe, there is something in there that I could work with!

Thanks